He took her hands, holding them tightly, examining her face, telling himself she had given him a perfectly understandable explanation for her absence.

"So can I." He drew her to the bed and fell back, pulling her with him. "Were you at your brother's lodgings?"

Judith froze beneath the stroking hand. "We had a great deal to talk about." Rolling over, she kissed his nipples, her tongue lifting the hard buds, her hand drifting down his body.

Marcus caught her hand in mid caress. "I don't think you've answered my question, Judith."

Hell and the devil. He was going to force her to lie. Or course.

Was she lying? What reason had he for believing her? The perverse prod of disillusion drove him onward down this destructive path. "Why do I have the feeling you're being less than straightforward?" One hand still held hers, his other caressed her back in long, slow strokes.

"I can't imagine why." Her voice was muffled, buried in his skin. She still had the use of her lips and tongue, but that use didn't seem to be creating the hoped for distraction.

"If you're lying to me, my dear wife, you're going to discover that my patience and tolerance have certain limits. You are my wife, and as such the guardian of my honor. Honor and untruths make uneasy bedfellows."

"Damn you, Marcus!" Judith sat up, glaring at him. "Stop threatening me. Why would I lie?"

"I don't know," he said. "But by the same token, why wouldn't you?"

Judith closed her eyes on the hurt… a hurt she wasn't entitled to feel because she was lying. But whose fault was that?

Marcus hitched himself up against the pillows, regarding her through hooded eyes in the dim, gray light of dawn. He could feel her pain as he could feel his own, and he tried to find the words to put this mess into perspective, to salvage something out of the night.

"Judith, I can't have you running around in secret pursuits at all hours of the night, with or without your brother. It may be what you're used to doing, but your position is different now. The Marchioness of Carrington, my wife, has to be above reproach… whatever Judith Davenport may have done. You know that damn well."

"And why are you assuming that I was doing anything that was not above reproach?" she snapped. "I told you I was with my brother. Why isn't that enough?"

"You seem to forget I know what you and your brother get up to. Fleecing gulls with fan play…"

"Not anymore," she interrupted, flushing. "You can no longer have any justification for such an accusation."

"I trust not," he said. "Because let me tell you something, Judith." Reaching out, he caught her chin, his eyes and voice as hard as iron. "If I ever find that you and your brother have performed your little duet again, by the time I've finished with you, you will wish your parents had never met. Do I make myself clear?"

Judith jerked her head free of his grip, her voice frigid. "Such a statement would be impossible to misconstrue, sir."

"I had hoped to be perfectly lucid."

"You may rest assured you were."

But they were going to do it again, just once more.

And once it was over, she'd leave Marcus to find himself the kind of wife he wanted: a woman of honor and principle; meek and obedient; the epitome of virtue. And she'd wish him joy of her, she thought savagely.

"I don't think we can have anything further to discuss," she declared. "I bid you good night, my lord."

Marcus swung himself off the bed. "Good night, madam."

The door clicked shut. Judith huddled into bed, swallowing the lump in her throat, tears pricking behind her eyes. She was miserable and she was disappointed. Her body ached for some other finale to the evening, for what had been promised and then so devastatingly denied. She stared, scratchy-eyed, into the pale light of early morning, her limbs aching, her mind as clear as a bell, her body throbbing for fulfillment.

Suddenly the door between their bedrooms flew open again and then slammed shut. Marcus stood at the end of the bed, and she could feel the force of his emotion as vitally as she could see the power in his aroused body.

"Damnation, Judith. I don't know what to do about you!" His voice was a contained whisper, but the fierce frustration was all the more potent for its containment. "I want you more than I have ever wanted another woman, and yet you madden me to such a degree sometimes, I can't distinguish between the need to love you and the need to subdue you."

He came round to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her.

Silently Judith kicked aside the cover, offering her body, opalescent in the pearly dawn. Marcus came down on the bed beside her. He gathered her against him, and his hand was hard on her body as he possessed the long length from waist to ankle, the indentations and the curves. Judith felt her skin come alive under the rough touch, her thighs dampen. His fingers probed with deep, intimate insistence, and his voice demanded that she tell him what pleased her, that she open herself to him fully, that she reveal to him the sites and touches that gave her greatest pleasure…

He branded her with tongue and hand, searing her with the mark of a lover who knew her in her vulnerability, in die wild passionate soaring of her need. And finally he knelt between her widespread thighs, his body etched against the light from the window. He drew her legs onto his shoulders, slipping his hands beneath her buttocks to lift her to meet the slow thrust of his entry that seemed to penetrate her core, to fill her with a sweet anguish that she could barely contain yet could not bear to relinquish.

Tears stood out in her eyes as she held his gaze. But they were tears of joy as the ravishment of her senses began anew, this time in shared glory, a tornado, a wild, escalating spiral that swept them into the void where the world has no sway and nothing mattered but the ability to be together in this way, to be a part of each other, she in him, he in her.

Afterward, he lay holding her, her head on his shoulder, her body soft against him as she slipped into sleep. And he was filled with a great tenderness, and a tiny spring crocus of hope pushed through the heavy soil of disillusion. Surely their passion counted for something. It couldn't be a complete lie. If only he could bring new eyes to bear.., cut through the preconceptions… see another Judith.

11

Bernard Melville, third Earl of Gracemere. Judith gazed across the ballroom at the man who had ruined her father, the man who had driven George Devereux and his children out of England, the man who had ultimately driven George Davenport to his death. The slow burn of rage was followed by the same prickle of excitement she felt at the gaming tables, when she knew she had her fellow players on the run.

"Charlie, are you acquainted with the Earl of Grace-mere?"

"Of course I am. Isn't everyone?" Her partner executed a smooth turn. "You dance wonderfully, Judith."

"A woman I fear is only as good as her partner," Judith observed, laughing. "Fortunately for me, you seem to have a natural talent."

Charlie blushed.

"It's a pity it doesn't run in the family," Judith said thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, your cousin isn't much for the dance floor."

"No, he never has been," Charlie said. "In fact, he's such a dull stick, I don't think he cares a fig for anything outside his history books and military politics." His voice was bitter.

"Are you and Marcus at outs?" Judith asked. Charlie's frequent visits to Devlin House had for some reason ceased in the last couple of weeks. She looked at him, noticing his rather drawn look, the constraint in his eye.

"He's so damn strict, Judith. He has such antiquated notions… he doesn't seem to understand that a man has to amuse himself somehow."

"That's not quite true," Judith demurred mildly. "He amuses himself a great deal with sporting pursuits and horses, and he has plenty of friends who don't seem to think him a dull stick."

"I'm sorry," Charlie s,aid uncomfortably. "I spoke out of turn. He's your husband…"

"Yes, but I'm not blind to his faults," Judith said with a wry smile. "He's not overly tolerant of what he considers failings, I grant you. Have you angered him in some way?"

Charlie shook his head and tried to laugh. "Oh, it's nothing. It'll put itself right soon enough… Have you had enough dancing? Shall I fetch you a glass of champagne?"

Judith let the subject drop since Charlie clearly didn't want to pursue it. "No, thank you," she said. "But I would like you to introduce me to Gracemere."

"Certainly, if you like. I'm not in his set, of course, so I don't know him well, but I could effect an introduction.''

Judith cast a rapid eye over the ballroom, looking for Sebastian. She spotted him dancing with Harriet Moreton. He was often dancing with Harriet Moreton, she realized with a start, though shy, soft-eyed, pretty, seventeen-year-olds weren't his usual style. She fixed her eye on her brother until he looked up from his partner. He knew she was going to engineer an introduction to the enemy tonight, one on which he would intrude quite naturally, and he was waiting for her signal.

"I swear, the country is a damnably tedious place at this time of year," the Earl of Gracemere was saying to the knot of people around him as Judith and Charlie approached. "Mud… nothing but mud as far as the eye can see."

"Can't think why you didn't come up to town sooner, Gracemere," one of the group observed.

"Oh, I had my reasons," the earl remarked with a little smile. His eye fell on Charlie and his companion and his smile broadened. "Ah, Fenwick, I trust you're going to introduce me to your charming companion. Lady Carrington, isn't it? I've been hoping for an introduction all evening." He bowed, raising her hand to his lips.

"My lord." Judith looked upon the man who had obsessed her thoughts, both sleeping and waking, for the better part of two years, from the moment she and her brother had read their father's deathbed letter and had finally understood that his disgrace and exile had not been the simple result of his own unbridled passion for gaming.

Bernard Melville had pale blue eyes-fish eyes, Judith thought with a surge of revulsion. They seemed to be looking into her soul.

She withdrew her hand from his, resisting the urge to wipe her palm on her skirt. She felt contaminated even through her satin gloves. He had a cruel mouth and a sharply pointed nose beneath the fish eyes. A dissolute countenance. How on earth was she to hide her loathing and revulsion sufficiently to charm him?

Of course she would. She was an expert at hiding her emotions… thanks to the Earl of Gracemere. She unfurled her fan and smiled at him over the top. "You've just returned from the country, sir. Whereabouts?'

"Oh, I have an estate in Yorkshire,' he said. "A bleak place, but occasionally I feel a duty to inspect it."

Cranshaw. The estate he had won from her father. Sebastian's birthright. A hot, red surge of anger swept through her and she lowered her eyes abruptly. "I'm unfamiliar with Yorkshire, sir. "

"I understand you've spent most of your life abroad, ma'am."

"I'm flattered you should know so much about me, sir." She laughed, the coquette's laugh that she'd perfected.

"My dear Lady Carrington, you must know that the news of your marriage enlivened an otherwise dull summer for us all."

"You pay me too high a compliment, Lord Gracemere. I had no idea my marriage could have competed with Waterloo as the summer's seminal event," she said smoothly. It was a mistake, but she hadn't been able to resist it.

An appreciative chuckle ran round the group and Gracemere's eyes flattened, a dull flush appearing on his cheeks. Then he laughed, too. "You're right, ma'am, to point out my foolishness. It was a facetious compliment. Forgive me, but your beauty has quite overtaken my wits."

"Now that, sir, is an irresistible compliment," she said, tapping his wrist lightly with her fan. "And an admirable recover."

He bowed again. "Is it too much to hope that you will honor me with this dance?"

"I had promised it to my brother, sir, but I don't imagine he'll insist on his prior claim." She turned to where Sebastian stood, having made his seemingly casual approach. "You'll release me, Sebastian?"